They took Dyon into the longhouse and his screams filled the village with noise and fear. The villagers were stricken. Only now were they realising the truth of what was coming.
If he expected an apology from Ont it was not forthcoming. He communicated only in sneers and found other things to do than look at Cahan. As the light approached its zenith, Furin left the longhouse and came to find him.
“I need to speak to the village, can your…” she looked over at the two reborn, once again statues before the gate.
“Reborn.”
“Can the reborn watch the walls?”
“I am sure they can, I do not think they even need to sleep.” He turned, “Nahac!” At the mention of her name both the reborn came alive, approached.
“What do you wish?” said Nahac. Her silent, unnamed sister watched.
“Watch the wall,” he said. “Tell us if the Rai come.”
“We will watch,” she said and they turned, walking over to take their place on the wall while Furin called her people to her before the shrine of Tarl-an-Gig.
“My people,” said Furin. “You have seen what the Rai did to Dyon.” She looked around, her voice faltered. “You can hear what they have done.” Dyon was no longer screaming, now there was only a low, constant whimper. “Through his pain, brave Dyon has shared what happened to him at Harnspire. All who went were tortured for information then killed, only he survived. I am sorry.” She looked over her audience, and Cahan noticed that those whose loved ones had gone on the journey with Dyon were not here. Furin must have told them privately and left them to their grief. “Not only killed, friends. But executed as traitors by the Rai, burned before the great taffistone to entertain the crowd. They have no intention of letting any of us live. We can no longer doubt what Cahan said, they will kill us all if we do not fight.”
“This is his fault!” Ont pointed at the forester, his face bent into fury. “He brought this upon us!”
“It does not matter.” Furin said it so softly, so matter-of-factly, it stopped any rant that Ont was building up to. “It is where we are, we must accept it if we want to live.”
“We cannot fight the Rai,” said another voice.
“You are right,” said Furin. “But we need only hold them until the light falls,” she looked around, let the weight of what she said fall upon them. “We can hold them with our bows, and the help of the Forestals, and the reborn,” she waved towards the wall. “Then at night we run for the forest, we will make a new life there.”
“What sort of life will that be?” this voice bereft. Already grieving all they had known.
“Better than no life at all,” said Furin. “Better than dying by fingerbreadths as fire crawls across your skin the way Dyon does.” She raised her voice. “Make no mistake, that is what they will do! They will drag us back to their spiretowns and largers and have us dying as sacrifice or in cages, so all know what happens to those who stand against the Rai.” She looked around. “Better, I say, the quick death of blade or spear.”
“What of our children?” from the back of the crowd.
“We will protect them as best we can,” her face grave, voice low. “But I will open my Issofur’s throat before I give him to the Rai.” A silence. A pause.
“We have done nothing wrong.” Another voice. Plaintive. Confused. Lost.
“True,” said Furin. Udinny stared at her in the most intent way Cahan had ever seen. Furin met her gaze. Licked her lips and worry washed across her face, the shudder of leaves caught by the indecision of the wind. She took a breath, gathered herself. “Udinny talks of an older god than Tarl-an-Gig, or Chyi, one as old as Iftal themselves.” He saw the villagers look to one another, more confusion. He thought Furin mad to have brought their gods up at such a time. What the people needed was certainty, not a new theology. But she carried on. “Udinny names her Ranya, a god of all things, who touches upon everything.” She was losing the villagers, they had been through so much with her and now she was pushing them too far. Cahan wanted to tell her to stop. “I see you, my friends,” she shouted, “and I know you do not care for what I say. Do not want talk of gods. Especially new gods.” Silence. “When Udinny spoke to me of Ranya, I laughed. What use was this soft god to me, I thought. A god who, Udinny says, nudges and pushes and gentles along those who serve them.” Muttering from the crowd now. Furin breathed, looked about her. “But consider where we are.”
“About to die!” shouted Diyra, the tanner.
“That was always coming!” shouted Furin. “From the moment the cloudtree fell, it was coming.” Silence once more, broken only by the whimpering of Dyon as he burned. “But consider this. Think of what has been sent to us. Forestals, adept with bows who have only ever preyed on this village, now here to fight with us.” She pointed at the wall. “Warriors who cannot die, come to us from an ancient battlefield.” Then to Venn. “A trion who can heal terrible wounds.” She looked up, light in her eyes. “These are signs! And we have the only monk of a forgotten god, to show us how to read these signs. And lastly,” she swallowed, “we have Cahan Du-Nahere, who knows how to fight, who has taught us how to fight. Who was trained by monks, to be Cowl-Rai.” A coldness within him. Betrayal, that she would spill his secret. He looked at Udinny, she was the only one who had known of his past. She did not look at him. The Forestals, however, they locked eyes onto him as if he were north and they a walknut.
“He is no Cowl-Rai,” shouted Ont.
“No,” said Furin, “he is not. He denied the power, so as not to be like those we face now. But he has knowledge, and that is a power.” She looked around. “It would be hopeless for a village like us to fight the Rai, I have heard many of you say as much. But do not lose hope,” she said. “More than you know, more than any of us know, is in play here. Issofur was called to Wyrdwood by the boughry, and sent back unharmed! I believe they did this so Cahan and Udinny could meet the Forestals. And rootlings attacked the Rai in Woodedge. The forest itself sides with us!” She let her words sink in. “We have come to the attention of a god, I think, and they will not abandon us. So Iftal bless us! Iftal bless us and great luck be upon us, for we fight.” Silence again, villagers looking to each other. Frightened, unsure. Sengui, the gasmaw farmer, stepped out from the crowd.
“You know me,” she said. “You know Aislinn. Know we have fought in many places before we settled here.” Aislinn gave her a nod from the crowd. “We did not want to ever fight again. Only a fool does.” She licked her lips. “I do not know of gods, I only know of me. Them out there,” she pointed past the walls with her spear, “they killed ours, they hurt ours and they will hurt us too. For that I think they should pay, and if Udinny’s god, her Ranya, has sent the means for that, in the forester and those with him, then it seems like a fine enough god to me. So let us stand against our enemies in Ranya’s name.”
And if Furin had lost the crowd, and whether Sengui had won them back, it all ceased to matter.
“Rai forming up!” Shouted by the reborn on the wall.
The battle was coming. Furin was ready for this moment. She turned to the shrine of Tarl-an-Gig behind her, the balancing man made of woven sticks, and grabbed it with both hands.
“I’ll not fight under the watch of a god who wants me dead,” she shouted. Then she pulled the statue over, standing back and watching it fall into the mud. Her people open-mouthed. Too shocked to act. “Get your bows,” she shouted. A count where nothing happened and Cahan wondered if she had lost them, if they would turn on her. “Take up your arms! We go to war!”
“For Ranya!” shouted Aislinn, holding her spear aloft.
“For Harn!” shouted Sengui.
Then all was movement. “Cahan,” shouted Furin, “Forestals and branch leaders, come to me. We must be ready.”
He joined Furin, with Ania, the Forestal, Aislinn, Sark, Sengui and Ont, the leaders of the four branch units. The village was suddenly full of people running, shouting, finding their places and the friends they were to fight with. The Forestal, Ania, leaned on the staff of her bow, drawing her hood up over her head.
“Cahan,” said Furin, “I bow to your expertise in tactics. Tell us what to do.” He took a deep breath, held it. The world became dark, the responsibility as it shifted to him unbearably heavy. For a moment he wished he had run. Wished he was deep in Wyrdwood, wished he did not have all these lives laid at his feet. “Cahan?” said Furin again. He closed his eyes.
You are running but you are not running fast enough.
You are running.
He felt a touch on his arm. Udinny looking up at him.
“No more running,” she said.
Let out the breath.
No more running.
“We keep the bows hidden at first,” he said. “As few people as possible on the walls. Aislinn and Ont, I want your archers before the Tiltgate ready to loose on my command. Keep your spears and shields near in case they break through.”
“Why only half of us?” said Ont. He crossed his huge arms. “And why be somewhere we cannot see the enemy?” He looked to the other branch leaders. “We should meet them with everything.” He looked about, confident in his ignorance. The Forestal, Ania, punctured his confidence with a low, hacking laugh.
“You might be big but you’re no soldier, are you?” she said. “The Rai will come at the front, thinking us ignorant villagers, be right in some cases.” She smiled at him, a mocking thing. Ont did not answer; like most in the village the Forestals scared him. “But, while you’re all looking at the Tiltgate, thinking you face your enemy, they send half their people round the back to come at you that way.” Ont stared.
“I think we would know if they did not send all their forces, many of us here can count,” but his words were bluff, said to try and win back some face.
“You would not,” said Aislinn, she spoke more softly, more gently. “Battle is chaos. It is frightening, and it is a place where decisions are no longer made sensibly. They are made on instinct and in the moment. That is why we need people like our forester, who know how to lead in battle, understand tactics. One clear head is worth a hundred soldiers.”
“She is right,” said Ania, “so let us hope our forester keeps his head clear.”
“At least let us see what we loose our arrows at,” said Ont, he no longer sounded like a man full of his own importance. Cahan could hear the confusion and fear behind his bluster. He pushed away his distrust, his anger at the butcher for the way he had acted in the past, because Ont must carry his words to those who would fight with them. As must the other branch leaders and now was not the time for resentment.
“I hide you for two reasons, Ont,” he said, and a brief moment of surprise on the butcher’s face, that Cahan spoke to him like an equal, not an opposite. “First, I want to surprise the Rai. I do not want them bringing shields to protect them from arrows.” Ont stared at him, narrowed his eyes. Cahan stepped a little closer, as if to share a thing only with him – though he wanted all around them to hear it. “Second, our strength lies in our numbers not accuracy, loosing arrows as quickly as you can to make a storm that rains down death. I will not risk losing you to spears on the wall. I know your range and I will aim for you.” Ont stared at him, he could see a war within the man. He knew what Cahan said was right, but did not want to be seen to be backing down.
“We need to aim,” said Ania, “it is a bad decision to put my Forestals behind walls. We have ten arrows for you, don’t waste them.”
“Aye,” said Ont, “she is right. Be foolish to waste their arrows.” He nodded, but there was little aggression in him. The Forestal had given him the way out he needed.
“We will put the Forestals on the walls then,” he said, “they came here to kill Rai, and that is what they will do.”
“A good day for it,” she said, and walked towards the wall.
“Can you not burn them all where they stand?” Ont asked him, not mocking, not gruff. “Furin said you were Cowl-Rai.”
“I am not,” he said. “Though I do have a cowl, Ont.” Did the way the butcher looked at him change? He was not sure.
“You will use it to defend us?”
“It requires feeding,” he said, looking at the gathered villagers. “It feeds on life and pain and I will not do that. But I will use my own life if I have to.” He looked towards the Tiltgate, imagined the Rai’s soldiers massing. “Yes, if it comes to it, I will do that.” He turned. “Sengui,” Cahan shouted, “did you see to the bridge before the Tiltgate?” She nodded.
“Aye, soon as we knew the Rai were here we cut through the supports, it won’t hold many now. And we flooded the pit with filth from the tanners’ pits, but you can probably smell that.”
“Good, it will be an unpleasant shock for them.”
He saw Ont flush at his words, saw fear in his eyes at talk of an assault. Then it ceased to matter. The call came.
“They advance!”